Olga Oleinikova, a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, was awarded the Jerzy Zubrzycki Postgraduate Conference Scholarship in December 2012.

The prize is awarded annually as one of the TASA Postgraduate Conference Scholarships for the best paper in the research areas of migration or cultural pluralism, or with the potential for contribution to public policy. It honours the work of Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Australian sociology and to public policy in the areas of migration and cultural pluralism. The prize was established at the suggestion of, and with generous support from, the School of Sociology, Australian National University.

The paper Olga presented at the TASA conference was based on her Master’s thesis, examining the role of social responsibility of the nation state towards a mass-scale labour emigration in the Ukrainian case. It puts forward the idea that the combination of a lack of social responsibility of the Ukrainian nation state and the transitional economy formed by the collapse of a socialist polity has encouraged the dramatic movement of Ukrainians to work in EuropeanUnion countries, specifically Italy and Poland.

Her current PhD research project, titled ‘Life-Course Strategies and International Migration: Ukrainian Post-Independence Migrants in Australia’, focuses on post-independence Ukrainian migration to Australia and is centred on migrants’ life-course strategies with respect to their employment, education or marriage. The focus is on the rationale behind the ‘waves’ of migrants who came to Australia in three periods (in the 1990s, 2000–2009, and since 2010). The project analyses the link between social transformations in post-Soviet Ukraine and international migration of Ukrainians to Australia since the 1990s, by focusing on the impact of socioeconomic and political restructuring on the migrants’ life strategies.